Walk Through The Fire
by SantoNaranja
Summary: Her nose is bleeding, steadily dripping in heavy crimson blobs to stain her snow white shirt just above her bulletproof vest and she's grinning; wildly and madly.


**Peace:** _Defined as the freedom from disturbance; tranquillity._

For Maura and Jane, this is not necessarily so.

The medical examiner believes that peace is not only the birds bathing in the Boston Common on a fresh spring morning, but Jane Rizzoli's face as she leans her head on the back of Maura's sofa after a long case has finally been closed. Usually, she is out like a light within seconds of sitting down.

For the detective, peace is when she knows that everyone she loves is tucked up safely at home; out of sight, out of mind. More importantly out of danger.

But Maura is not safe.

And Jane is not at peace.

She stalks back and forth behind the group of huddled negotiators, occasionally pulling her lips into a twisted snarl as she growls at the junior officers.

Pale, they stutter an unwarranted apology and stumble over themselves to get out of her way. Every glimpse she catches of the dusty decimation masquerading as a warehouse, she has to wrench her gaze away before the impulse to snap the luminous police tap and charge into the building on her own becomes overwhelming.

Maura is inside that building, and Jane feels so fragile and helpless. Her best friend could be dead, or harmed, or maimed, or bruised and victimised. And there is still not a damn thing they can do until they make contact with the villain of the piece and make sure the place is secure enough for the storm of the BPD.

Jane briefly wonders if this is how Korsak felt as she lay on a mouldy basement floor, pinned with rusty scalpels through her hands. With a glance, she spots him some way over to the left, chatting animatedly with Frost.

It makes the scars of her palms ache.

And possibly the most tragic detail of Jane is that it had happened so fast.

Boston Homicide & the Medical Examiner had been called to the scene of a murder, as was fitting to their job description. A body had been found swimming in a pool of its own blood, left to rot in the rat-infested alleyway between two derelict warehouses.

What they had counted on was the abundance of forensic evidence that plastered and littered the crime; a sloppy murderer meant an easier investigation in many cases.

They hadn't, however, bargained on the perpetrator to still be there, lurking just out of sight.

Her back was only turned for a minute.

She was facing away from Maura, who was crouched over the body. Fiddling with her cell phone, she heard the scuffle and the scream.

Spinning and drawing her service weapon, Jane carelessly dropped her phone and watched a man with a gun pressed to Maura's temple and an arm constricting her throat dragging her down towards a cracked doorway which led into one of the buildings. Jane raised her gun, but the man bared his yellow, cigarette-stained teeth in warning.

"Fucking dare to try it, detective, and I'll blow this chick's brains out!" he shouted.

Maura's eyes glistened with tears, pleading with her best friend, but Jane didn't lower her gun.

"I mean it. I will blow them _the fuck out_!"

Reluctantly, Jane dropped her gun hand to her side and watched as her best friend was forced into the entryway and into the unknown darkness.

Now, Jane wanted to smack her own head against the rough, smoke-blackened brick for hesitating.

Still, she knows the risk was too great. Even if she had got the man right between the eyes with her bullet, muscle reflex could have caused him to pull the trigger regardless. Dead murderer and dead Maura.

In the end then, it would really have been Jane that killed her.

And that was a burden that she couldn't live to bear.

Very few situations would end with Jane Rizzoli eating the smoking muzzle of her work-issued weapon, but Maura's death on her watch was one of them.

"Come on!" she barks suddenly, causing the negotiators to whirl around in alarm. She gestures blindly to her right in the direction of the building. "We've been here for an hour, why aren't you doing anything? We just gonna stand here and talk about what's on TV tonight, huh?

Cavanaugh, who had been hunched over a blueprint spread on the bonnet of a cruiser, gives a short nod to the team who are preparing to engage the murderer and the hostage. He marches Jane to the side.

"This isn't your division, Rizzoli," he says sternly, glancing at the heavily armed uniformed men emerging from the black vehicle which has just pulled up beside the patrol cars.

"It's Maura!" Jane hisses, her hands balling into fists at her side.

"I know," the lieutenant attempts, cautiously trying to placate the fuming woman.

"It's my best friend, and if nothing she's the goddamn Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth. Doesn't that mean _something_?"

"Usually, yes," Cavanaugh concedes, wiping his palms on the sides of his hips. "But right now she's just another unlucky civilian in a bullshit situation."

Jane wants to roar and curse and scream that Maura is much more important that that, and how dare Cavanaugh even insinuate it.

She wants to collapse to her knees, curl up in worship and beg a God she barely believes in to spare her best friend.

She wants to calmly walk away from the whole scene; walk the whole way to the harbour and throw herself in, if it only meant she could escape from this gruelling ordeal.

Instead, Jane grits her teeth and clenches her hands even further; her nails etching crescent imprints into her palms.

Her patience is wearing very thin. Subconsciously, she turns to make her way towards her parked cruiser. As she does so, the world around her blurs, giving way to her mind's eye and the twisted, dark images that it conjures-

Maura lying face down in a cooling, thick puddle of her own blood.

Maura, gagged and bound to a splintered, rigid chair about to be tortured. Her muffled pleas are choked as she begs for her life.

Jane freezes, her body like a motion photograph which has cut her off mid-stride. She is stock still even as an exhaled whimper escapes.

_What is he's a brutal rapist?_

And just then, Jane Rizzoli's patience runs out.

Throwing open the back door of her car, she reaches in to retrieve the black bag of police utilities she always keeps there. Anger is like battery acid leaking into her blood and singeing her bones.

She yanks out what she's looking for, bringing it into the harsh light of day and already over her head before it registers with her that her body has formulated her plan as if it were muscle memory.

Jane clutches tightly to the heavy material of the bulletproof vest, eyes darting around, her vigour stunted. She waits a second to see if anyone has spotted her; anyone that would clue into direction of action and attempt to stop her.

But no one comes. Not Korsak. Not Cavanaugh.

Certainly not one of the young officers that she sent running with a single, chilling glare.

More cautiously now, she slides her jacket off of her arms, reopening the cruiser just to chuck it inside. She rolls up the sleeves of her white shirt to the elbow. Then she readjusts the vest on her frame, before checking the straps and tightening her ponytail.

The negotiators remain hunched over the blueprint on the cruiser when she makes her way back over, this time joined by two dark-haired men in what reminds Jane of full riot gear. They are unsure of just how many men could be in the warehouse; any number of them could be hidden in the shadows ready to lash out.

Korsak chose this moment to totter over to her side, he doesn't notice that she's changed into protective gear; his lack of observation makes it evident that he too is focused solely on getting Maura safely from the building.

"They've managed to make contact with the perp inside, but there's at least two more in there," Korsak explains gruffly, only glancing at her for a sliver of a second out of the corner of his eyes; he tries to gauge her reaction but she remains purposefully stoic, waiting on him to finish.

He sighs deeply. "But he says he'll only talk if he takes a cop instead. If he hears any funny business he'll…"

_Blow her fucking brains out._

He doesn't finish; he doesn't need to.

"Got it," Jane mutters.

As soon as Korsak shakes his head and starts off back towards Frost, Jane is striding towards the dividing line. Though nothing is certain for sure, it feels as though it has already been set in stone. She is walking to her fate; whatever that may be.

As it nears, the police tape is almost a physical manifestation of the crossover from life to death. With quick, sharp steps, Jane drives with fierce determination towards her fate.

Muttering under her breath, she feels an absence of the usual coil of anticipation in her stomach. She sees the coroner's van parked near the alleyway where the original body was found; perhaps she will be a passenger this afternoon, too.

"He wants a cop, he'll have one," she whispers, reaching the flimsy plastic barrier.

The choice was easy, even when her body broke into action and made the decision before she did. Her life for Maura's. The cop for the coroner.

Without another moment to pause, she ducks under the divide and starts off towards the front entrance of the building.

"Rizzoli!" Cavanaugh yells. Jane stops. Turns back to face him.

His face is like thunder. But it isn't rage or anger; it's fear.

She shrugs, starting to turn away again.

"Get back here now!" A pause, a silence brimming with desperation. "I could have you disciplined for this! Desk duty for weeks! – Months!"

Jane simply shrugs again.

It feels as if they are on a pier and she is on a boat while it chances away from the shore. Slowly it drifts gradually away. Even as she stands still, staring calmly but defiantly at her superiors fear-stricken expression, she knows that she cannot answer his masked plea.

_Don't do this. Come back to safety. You go in there and I'm sure you won't come back out._

She can't come back. She cannot cross the barrier again.

She is at sea now.

She is hoping she won't drown.

By chance she catches her brother's eye. Frankie is frozen mid-way through getting out of a car, and his knuckles are bone-white where they grip the top of the door.

In a moment suspended in time between them, the fear clouding his eyes sweeps her up and away from the grimy warehouses and flashing patrol cars and even the imbecile police officers. Suddenly she is coaxing her terrified younger brother out from under his bed in the middle of a cold Boston night as their parents' raging voices float up from downstairs.

Every so often, something thumped or smashed or cracked and it scared him so much that he had taken refuge under his bed. Then, only aged seven, he had bunched his hands in her Red Sox jersey and cried into her shoulder as she held him. He was shaking, begging her to reassure him that the fighting downstairs didn't mean that he wasn't about to lose his parents.

Now, he is begging her to reassure him that he isn't about to lose his sister.

She drops her eyes to the ground.

She can't lie to him.

For the first time, Jane realises how quiet it is. Before, there had been the angry shouts of arguing men, discussing the best route of attack. Doors opening and slamming shut. Boots of uneasy men and women tramping on cracked concrete. Uncomfortable, snappy conversations.

And now all that is gone. Dead silence. She can hear the steady pulse in her neck. The droves of law enforcement officers gawk at her, barely even moving.

Her footsteps could be ground-shaking with how heavily their sound falls on the air.

She wonders what the chances are that she would live from this experience. Usually, the hostages were let away safely, but this man seems unstable. Unpredictable. And there's no telling just how many men there are waiting for Jane. Anything could happen.

Jane is only a few feet from the entrance when the cold trickle of fear finally breaks through the numbness of her determination. Is she afraid to die? To spend her last minutes glaring down the jaw of death in the form of a psycho hard man with a gun? Maybe. But she knows that if she dies, she'll die for Maura.

She's always been willing to die for Maura Isles.

Jane crosses the threshold and waits. Her arms prickle with goosebumps and the scars on her palms flare up in phantom warning of what could happen.

When nothing does, she steps a little further into the warehouse. In the shadows, everything looms. Miscellaneous items coloured grey with dust lie here and there; discarded and forgotten.

Jane tries to call out, to alert the men that she is there. If the gunman thinks that he is being taken by surprise, then it is difficult to ascertain how he will react. Again Jane's mind helpfully informs her that unpredictability is extremely dangerous.

But no sound comes. Her throat is so dry it feels brittle, so she clears it before trying again.

"Detective Rizzoli, Boston Homicide. You there?"

Some harsh whispers; shifting and rustling.

"Walk towards the middle of the warehouse."

Her fingertips twitching to grab for her service weapon, Jane obeys, instead holding her arms aloft on either side of her head to show she comes meaning no harm- yet.

Rounding a particularly tall shapeless structure that has been covered with an oil-stained white sheet, she finds Maura perched on the top of box in the centre of the warehouse. The doctor is so white she looks sick, but when she sees Jane her eyes light up.

The gunman lingers just behind her, leaning against a hollowed out shell that just about passes for the body of a car.

"Detective, have you come to negotiate?" he asks, his tone apathetic despite his words.

Jane glances again at Maura before shaking her head. "No, I've come to offer a trade."

The man's eyebrows furrow, and from somewhere to their left, another man coughs. Jane doesn't look away from the gunman's eyes.

"Okay. What trade?" he grunts.

Jane points at Maura. "Me for her."

The medical examiner gasps. Jane thinks she hears her name falling from Maura's lips but she can't be sure.

"You a definitely a cop? No bullshit?" another voice grunts, but Jane doesn't even entertain him, keeping her eyes level with the gunman.

Jane nods.

Her police brain, now that she finally physically sees that Maura is safe, kicks in. The men are probably requesting some form of amnesty from custody, or are looking to do sentence deals with the prosecutors. They could also be willing to give up information on other drug gangs and trafficking rings, depending on how deeply they are involved.

And depending on how far down the rabbit hole goes affects the chances of Jane getting out of this deal without a scratch. The electric shock which races from the base of her head to the base of her spine and curls into her stomach threatens to make her faint; by ignoring protocol and diving straight into this situation she has as good as taken the gun from the man and pressed it to her own temple herself.

But all she could think about was making sure that Maura got out of this. Screw protocol and the correct method if every minute spend debating methods and diagrams and details meant an increase in the chances that this gang of men would get angsty and take chances.

Like hurting their hostage.

"Fine," the gunman grunts, raising his weapon. "But first, put your gun on the floor."

Jane's heart is hammering so forcefully in her chest that she is sure any minute now it'll crack her breast bone and burst right out.

Obediently, her eyes flicking to Maura's, she takes out her gun, crouches and sets it down with a reverberating click on the warehouse floor.

"Kick it away," he orders, his voice monotone.

She does. She tries not to wince as it scrapes itself across the hard floor, disappearing into the shadows and out of sight.

The corners of his mouth creep upwards and then split into a grin. Once again he reveals his foul, mustard tainted teeth through crusty lips. Jane's stomach churns.

"You're free to go," he says, eyes staying on Jane's though he waves a hand airily at Maura.

Immediately, Maura leaps up and throws herself in Jane's direction, arms flying around the detective's neck. Maura is trembling violently as Jane slips her hands around Maura's waist, holding her tightly and closing her eyes.

"Jane, please d-don't!-" Maura whispers.

"Shh...It'll be fine. You just walk straight outta that door. I'll be right behind you, I promise," Jane murmurs in her husky tone, turning her head and kissing the M.E. chastely on the side of the head, right behind her ear. Maura's hands squeeze her tighter. She feels wet tears soaking the shoulder of her shirt, just beside the strap of her bulletproof vest.

Jane inhales deeply, smelling the spice of expensive perfume. The orange tinged with something exotic which always burned Jane's nostrils in the sweetest way. It was something she associates so closely with Maura, and if it was to be the last thing she smelled, then she'd count herself lucky.

Nosing Maura's tickling blonde hair, Jane kisses her temple and pulls back.

"Go on, Maura," she gently urges, a hand on the M.E.'s lower back, coaxing her in that direction.

"Jane, they've-" Panic inflames Maura's speech, gagging her with words she wants to say. Before she can even force any more out, Jane is pushing her away towards the dark passage which leads to freedom.

"Go," Jane says, though her voice cracks in an uncharacteristic show of nerves.

"Jane-!"

"Leave, Maura!" Jane shouts. Maura still stands there, staring dumbly at her, as if she can't process the idea of her own freedom. Jane tries not to snap a the best friend, but the tension and pressure of the room is getting to her head and making her feel like the world is swimming out of view in front of her. "Maura, I subbed myself for you, now go!"

Maura's feet begin to retreat of their own accord, like her body's instinct to escape danger overrules her heart's desire to stay with Jane. Her face twists into a horrified expression as she glances over her shoulder and sees Jane being dragged back to sit on the box she just vacated, her hands being bound behind her back as she growls something at them.

But despite how much her heart squeezes painfully tight in her chest, her feet speed up and before she knows it she's back out into the fresh, bright air.

"Dr Isles!" a few voices shout. Korsak, Cavanaugh and Frost are among the voices.

She wants to run to them.

Her body stops.

Twenty feet from the shadowy doorway to the warehouse and twenty feet from the safety of the police tape, Maura's frantic exodus stops completely. She twists around and squints her eyes, a hand clutched to her stomach even when it is her head which begins to cause her grief.

_You shouldn't have left her._

A bang ricochets around the lot in front of the warehouses and as if it were one body, the mass around her animates. Voices rise up as one and then boots are hounding the ground. They remind her of the documentaries on television where she sees a herd of wild beasts migrating in the African planes, all running as one.

It's then that she realises the echoing bang was a gunshot.

_Jane has been shot?!_

Maura makes a strangled noise and now presses both of her hands into her stomach, frozen even as the world dissolves around her into something new. The edges of her vision blur into static, protecting her mind from the sudden kinetic implosion of the BPD.

_But they wouldn't shoot her because they needed her to negotiate._

There could have been a change of plan.

_And she was wearing a bulletproof vest._

There are plenty of other places she could have been shot, Maura knows-

_-Straight between the eyes._

_-the soft flesh of her temple._

_-in the back of the head, like an execution._

The units rush forward past her like waves around rocks. In their black uniforms, they are like swarming insects vacating a nest; and they buzz just as venomously too.

Maura's world goes into a grey haze as the whizzing and cracking of gunfire amid thundering shouts erupts from inside the warehouse. Colour bleeds away and all she imagines are flashes of the future-

_A funeral home with silent rooms; threadbare carpets and unsympathetic undertakers_

_Preparing to stand and give a solemn eulogy to a packed church_

_A life alone-_

And colour returns in the form of Jane being ushered from the entrance of the warehouse. It explodes into her vision. The blue of the sky. The smoke red of the brick warehouse. The grey of the dull, flaky pavement. The shine of the sun in Jane's dark locks. The contrast of the black vest on the white shirt.

The contrast of _blood_ on the white shirt.

Jane reaches Maura, where she still stands since she staggered out into the sunlight. She doesn't speak yet, watching her best friend's face surging with an intense range of emotions.

Emotion is sucked out of Maura's body, just as the colour drains out of her face. There is relief that Jane has come out alive. Delirium that all of this has just happened. Awe that she even _could_ happen, that they could have been thrown into this and come out the other side together. But there's also something else.

Simmering under the surface, threatening to blow its top, is boiling anger. Anger that Jane could have lost her life today, that she could be so blaze about facing her death. Maura almost lost her, almost became alone in this world once more and Jane doesn't even _care_.

As Jane stands there, she is perfectly out of balance with her usual composure. There's dust settling just on the roots of her dark mane of hair. There's a raw, bloody gash on her forehead.

Her nose is bleeding, steadily dripping in heavy crimson blobs to stain her snow white shirt just above her bulletproof vest and she's grinning; wildly and madly.

"Hey, Maur. Guess I made it, huh?"

Maura slaps her across the face.

* * *

><p>An hour later sees Jane perches on the edge of the red sofa in Maura's office, patiently remaining still and quiet as the doctor finished attending the sutures on her forehead.<p>

In a weak, listless voice, Jane had explained that there had only been one man armed in the warehouse, and the rest were weapon less. Once Jane realised this, she attempted to overpower her captor and a violent struggled ensued; hence her bloody shirt. The gun had went off, alerting the BPD officers and, eventually, leading to the arrests of all of the men involved in the brief kidnapping.

Maura hasn't spoken once. Speechless, maybe, that she had such a strong reaction in slapping Jane. The usually rambling doctor is silent and stoic; on the outside at least. Inside she is a tornado.

Wordlessly she cracked Jane's nose back into place and cleaned her forehead before stitching it up.

Now, stepping back with a sharp inhale, Maura's eyes stay riveted to her feet as she peels off her plastic gloves. Their snapping sound of removal is the only thing that breaks the silence. She can feel the burning gaze on her, but she doesn't dare break her contact with the crusty blood stain of Jane's blood that had caught her eye. It grounds her; it calms her.

"I'm sorry for lashing out at you the way that I did," Maura concedes quietly. "It was wrong of me, and I apologise."

Jane raises an eyebrow. Those are the first words Maura has spoken to her since the warehouse.

"You mean slapping me, then tending to my wounds, right?"

Maura purses her lips; nods sharply.

"Oh, good, just so we're clear then," Jane mutters, scratching Hoyt's scar on the back of her right hand. "Which, just for future reference, what the hell?"

Maura bites her lip, shaking her head and turning her back on the detective in order to brace her hands flat against the surface of her desk for support.

"You just...shouldn't have done that," Maura says evenly, trying not to let the feelings inside claw their way back up her throat. She is determined to release this slowly, gradually and maturely. She doesn't want it all to fall out in a jumbled, uncoordinated mess. She wants understanding and coherency; it's what she knows Jane deserves.

"Done what-?"

"You know what," Maura snaps, spinning to face Jane again. She could almost feel the vicious flash in her eye- just about.

Jane looks sombre, like she already knows how this conversation is going to go, but she goes along with it because it isn't enough for these words to be bouncing around in her own skull; they need to be said aloud. Maura needs the chance to express them, and Jane is offering her that chance right now.

"You shouldn't have done that," Maura repeats; this time her voice breaks at the end, sorrow overwhelming her as she remembers how vivid her hallucinogenic moment was when she imagined the immediate consequences of Jane's death. The grief she would have felt, even now with the detective living and breathing flesh and blood in front of her, still holds her heart in a vice grip.

As each party considers the next vein of response, the words themselves ring in the air around them.

_You shouldn't have done that for me, you could have died. I'm not worth it. I'm not worth losing Boston's finest detective over-_

"You shouldn't have-" This time the emotion finally bests her, strangling the rest of the phrase from her lips. By now, however, her meaning is clear enough for Jane to understand.

"Maura," Jane starts softly, getting calmly to her feet. "I'd walk through fire for you." She ducks her head and tries to meet Maura's eye. "You know that, right?"

"_No..._" Maura stresses, the cracks beginning to show in both her eloquence and patience. A hand flies up to flutter nervously around the base of her neck, occasionally scratching between her collarbones, as if that would help to deviate the anxiety form her words. "What if- what if you had-"

_Died. Passed Away. Been killed. Moved on. Suddenly been gone. Nothing._

Maura's one and only friend, her one and only living lifeline in this world reduced to nothing but a body in a casket. Every memory, laugh, tear, smirk, giggle; every solved case, every random useless factoid, every Red Sox game spent on Maura's couch, every midnight phone call spawned by a mesh of loneliness, insomnia and the crippling need to hear her best friend's voice- all this would be gone.

Within months, Jane Rizzoli would be nothing but dust and mottled bone in a mouldy, rotting police uniform, six feet deep in the damp earth.

The M.E. shut her eyes tightly, like a child trying to block out a terrible nightmare.

"I'm a big girl, Maura. I knew the risks and hell, Cavanaugh is gonna have me on desk duty for at least a month cause I defied police protocol but..." Jane rolls her shoulders, straightening as she emphasises the core truth behind her meaning. "I'd do it a million times just to make sure that you're safe."

"Why?"

A single word.

A million worlds.

A shadow passes in Jane's eyes and her expression visibly darkens. It leaves the pulse jumping in Maura's throat as she clambers to find where she could possibly have gone wrong with a single word.

"You know why," Jane breathes, her eyes shifting to one of the tribal masks which adorn the walls of Maura's office. Despite her words, something shifts in her face, a pained desperation. It doesn't tell Maura she _does_ know; it tells her that she _should_ know. Maura is scrambling to find it.

Her mind stops. All of the emotion and anxiety completely derails and once again she is left wondering how she so easily gets lost in even the most simple of social interactions.

"I-I'm sorry. Did- did I upset you in some way?" Maura prompts timidly.

Jane opens her mouth to speak, but thinks better of it and instead sinks back into the couch. Maura watches as she heaves a huge sigh and rubs her palms up and down on her thighs in agitation. She leans her elbows forward on her knees, rubbing at her scarred palms and hanging her head.

To Maura, she looks defeated.

"Well, this isn't exactly how I ever imagined telling you, but here we are," she whispers, more to the ground beneath her feet than Maura, and then she looks up, straight into the doctor's eye.

She looks more terrified with what she's about to say than she ever did facing a madman with a gun.

"I think...no wait… I know I've fallen in love with you," Jane utters, like it's the last breath she'll ever take.

_Oh_.

And then, for Maura, everything makes a little more sense.

"I know," she replies.

Firstly, Jane looks brokenly vulnerable; and then she looks _devastated_. Like Maura's lacklustre response has ripped a hole in her being. Her jaw works to form a response, but all that escapes is a strangled sound between a bitter laugh, a gasp and a heart-wrenching sob. And then she's up off of the couch and striding towards the door. She just about gets her fingertips on the metal handle.

And then she's being spun around, her back shoved against the door and lips on hers. The instant Jane realises that the crushing kiss she finds herself getting lost in is really Maura kissing her, her hands slip around and pulls the doctor closer to her.

Her entire body, from the roots of her still dusty hair to the toes of her feet curling inside of her boots, feels like it has been set aflame. It's everything she had ever wished their first kiss to be, like being born again in fire and passion. And Maura is pulling, and then tugging, and then yanking her back towards the couch in the middle of the room.

The kiss breaks as they both topple down awkwardly into sitting positions onto the couch. Flushed faces grin at each other.

"You didn't let me finish," Maura says, almost shyly.

Jane licks her lips, shaking her head before delivering a chaste kiss to Maura's lips. She reaches for the doctor's hand and entwines their fingers. Jane's heart is beating inside of her head instead of her chest, she is sure of it.

Maura shook her head, blonde curls bouncing on either side of her face. "I've been so lonely in my life, Jane. But...when I looked back at you as I walked out of that warehouse..." Her breath catches, and Jane brings her hand up to give it a reassuring kiss. A kiss that tells her _It's okay, I'm still here with you._

"Loneliness has always been an ache," Maura continues, verging on losing herself in Jane's dark eyes. "But it's never actually hurt before. Not until that moment."

"The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole life fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly," Jane quotes, tucking a stray tendril of Maura's hair behind her ear with her left hand.

Maura blinks in utter surprise. "The Great Gatsby?"

A sheepish grin creeps its way over Jane's face. "English was my favourite subject in school. Taught me about human psyche and, I dunno, maybe it kinda helped push me in the whole detective direction."

Maura's eyes twinkle at the information, and then they glaze over with the further revelation that it brings; there is so much that she knows about Jane Rizzoli and yet so much that she does not. It opens up a crevasse inside, immediately filled with such strong feeling that she can't separate them or compartmentalise for a stunted moment.

"So..." Jane segues, glancing at the tribal masks on the wall. Maura's heart contracts slowly in her chest, the squeeze painfully tight and making her almost groan aloud with the ache. She worries that Jane is about to tear this moment in two, feed Maura words dripping in regret and leave their sudden realisation of love and lust in tatters on the floor of the office.

But Jane being Jane, she never lets Maura down.

With a dazzling grin, the detective stands and tugs the doctor to stand with her.

"Jane...?" Maura trails. Jane kisses her forehead, and then pulls her along as she heads towards the door. "Jane, what?"

"Well, I gotta go get chewed out by Cavanaugh, and then, Dr Isles, I'm taking you to lunch," Jane states, winking at Maura before leading her out into the deserted hallway that preludes the morgue.

"But, the autopsy!" Maura pleads, glancing over her shoulder at the shining silver blur that is the morgue through the frosted glass doors.

"Nope, we need some food after this morning. Besides, you need to be awake and alert for when you do just...whatever it is you do," Jane assures, waving her free hand in the air.

"Wait, Jane!" Maura starts, finally stopping the brunette in her tracks. She gestures to their linked hands, and then at the elevator, before tilting her head in question. Jane frowns, glaring down at the floor before dropping Maura's hand. The doctor's heart falls into her stomach.

"You're right, this isn't right at all," Jane whispers, shaking her head.

Maura thinks she is going to be sick. Perhaps everything is just a dream. She wonders if those theories of relativity and time travel could be proven, because she thinks that she would give a limb to erase the last few hours at this present moment.

But then Jane gets a teasing glint in her eye, and Maura's red panic recedes from her vision. Jane leans forward and kisses her, lingering a second, before standing back and slipping her hands into the pockets of her pants.

"You want to go to dinner with me tonight?" she asks casually, seeming not to notice how Maura looks like her knees are about to buckle from underneath her. "Y'know, go out and talk everything over. Hash it out? Cause I don't know about you Maur, but I want everything with you."

Jane could be handing Maura her heart in her hands. Maura replies so honestly and carefully that she imagines physically taking the heart from Jane's quivering hands and promising that she would never bring it to any harm.

"Yes. Yes, that sounds...brilliant," Maura manages, as Jane stabs the button for the elevator with a bony finger.

"Great," Jane responds. Their smiles are dazzling. They get lost in the delirious moment, broken only by the ping of the elevator and the sliding of the metal doors. Jane steps backwards into the elevator's depths, not wanting to go but knowing she had to. Still, she doesn't let disappointment mar her features, and even if she did she isn't sure if it could; her smile is too wide and too bright.

Just as Jane is about to disappear, Maura jump-starts back to life.

"Wait!" A booted foot sticks out and wedges the elevator door open. But no attempt is made to reopen the elevator completely, it simply stands rigid, waiting for Maura to continue.

"After you speak with the lieutenant, are we still going for lunch?" she asks meekly.

The door is shoved open and two strong, scarred hands reach for Maura's, yanking her inside the elevator. As the door is finally allowed to slip closed, those hands nestle Maura close to the side of Jane in a warm embrace. A kiss is pressed into her hair.

Maura closes her eyes for a moment. A warm, pulsing sensation begins in her heart and settles inside, spreading throughout her entire body.

For the first time today, she is at peace.


End file.
